Allen Welsh Dulles is a man that helped America develop in so many ways. He was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a successful corporate lawyer as well as being a member of the assassination of president JFK commission in to the event.

Do you know of Allen Welsh Dulles? No, well it is time to remedy this situation as he is a pivotal and important man in America’s recent history.

Allen Welsh Dulles Early Years

Born in April 1893 Dulles spent his young years in New York. Dulles was one of five children from a loving family; his dad was a Presbyterian minister and his mother a stay at home wife.

The whole Dulles family grew up with public service as the main agenda of topic and all children ended up in high positions within the government.

Upon reaching the age to gain an education, Dulles proved to be a very intelligent man and ended up going to Princeton University where he graduated. After university Dulles then moved into public service and his diplomatic and intelligence service started.

Allen Dulles Intelligence Work

Upon finishing university Dulles enlisted in the Diplomat Services, this saw Dulles move around Europe from country to country, including Great Britain and Switzerland. By the time World War One broke out Dulles was still in Europe and his position changed to that of Intelligence Officer gaining information to support America and her Allies.

Allen Welsh DullesAfter the end of World War One Dulles stayed with the intelligence gathering he had carried out in the war and became chief of the Near East Division of the State Department. This position lasted for five years before he followed his brother to work as a Lawyer as a law firm in New York.

While working at the law firm Dulles engaged in some high profile legal advisory roles on arms limitation for the League of Nations, these roles saw Dulles engage with Hitler and Mussolini among others.

Thing changed for Dulles after the attack on Pearl Harbour when America joined the Allied war effort. Because of the attack President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the action of setting up an intelligence agency solely for the protection of America from Japanese actions. This job of creating an intelligence agency came to a fellow Lawyer that Dulles worked with, and through this contact he was brought back into the world of intelligence.

This new intelligence agency started off as the Coordinator of Information. After the removal of British MI6 officers Room 3603 of Rockefeller Center was handed over to the new department which was then renamed to Office of Strategic Services.

During the Second World War Dulles made many valuable German contacts that would feed him information about German plans and secret documents. These contacts proved to be extremely important to the Allied war effort.

This new department was hugely successful during World War Two and is seen as the predecessor to today’s CIA. In the early years after World War Two Dulles set about writing up the legislation and planning for the CIA and upon The National Security Act of 1947 being enacted Dulles became Director of the newly formed CIA.

Post World War Two Dulles carried on being at the forefront of American intelligence as he created a group headed by Dulles that managed to start overthrowing governments and heads of state. The first scalp that Dulles took was the 1953 overthrow of Iranian’s President Mohammed Mossadegh, this was due to conflicts over oil. 1954 saw his next scalp taken as he planned the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz, the Guatemalan President over land.

The Retired Allen Dulles

After retiring from the CIA Dulles became an author and wrote the book The Craft of Intelligence, the date was 1963. This was the same year that the then President Lyndon Baines Johnson chose seven people to lead the commission into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, of which Dulles was one of the chosen seven.

Dulles passed away in 1969 aged 75 years of age of influenza and pneumonia.

Allen Dulles Negative Media

In recent times many have tried to discredit Dulles as a traitor as they say evidence shows he was actually trying to fund Nazi Germany through the war rather than eradicate them. There is no evidence to prove this and many say it was the opposite with Dulles unhappy with the treatment of Jewish people in Germany.